


Within the Bosom of the Rose

by Arrested



Series: The Day-Dream [11]
Category: Ivanhoe, Original Work
Genre: Anachronistic Social Attitudes, Angst, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Middle Ages, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-05-14 04:48:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14762888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arrested/pseuds/Arrested
Summary: Companion piece toIn That New World Which Is the Old.The course of true love never did run smooth.





	1. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:**

> Each of these characters is special to me in his own right, and together they represent the third most important pairing in this monster of a tale, but I didn’t think it made sense to weave their story too closely into Oscar and Wamba's. So this entry will be a place to explore their significant moments together throughout the years covered by _In That New World Which Is the Old_. I hope you won't mind taking a little detour with me every now and then.
> 
> This story is my original work. All rights are reserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for chapter warnings (spoilers).

Their eyes were on him the moment he entered the yard.

Nicholas felt them, the weight of half a regiment’s worth of assessing stares fixed on him at once. The sensation made his skin itch, a pricking of danger that set his teeth on edge. He had as much right to occupy the castle yard as they. He lifted his chin and stayed the course he had chosen, refusing to lower himself to pay any note to the soldiers.

He had chosen his moment carefully, watching and waiting until their training was done and they loitered at liberty. They made for a fine display from afar, vigorous young men braying and tussling in their easy camaraderie, at least until he appeared. The merely alert among them quickly lost interest, once they had taken his measure and deemed him no threat. Others, the brash and insolent, cast more hostile looks. One of them made some remark that set his fellows chuckling in mocking chorus. Nicholas knew what men of that sort said about him. Not to his face, not any longer, but they made their contempt evident in their own dull-witted ways. They too returned soon enough to their boorish excuse for discourse when he did nothing to amuse them.

Theirs was not the attention that most interested him. There was another glance, and that one lingered. It fell upon him with the steady pull of a lighthouse flame across a dark sea, a beacon beckoning his attention insistently to its source. He did not look, did not smile, did not dare to acknowledge that call until he was sure. He ruminated instead on who its owner might be. It was too assured for a spot-faced novice, too bold for a man who had had time to cultivate a sense for discretion. Nicholas savored the sweet temptation of it, and kept his eyes to the fore, until he had completed his turn about the field and slowed to a stop in the shadow of the wall. It was only there that he turned to discover the face of his admirer.

“Oh.” A ripple of delight fluttered through him at his first glimpse. It teased his breath from him on a sigh, curling his lip and weighting the lids of his eyes.

The soldier was built like a young elm, tall and lean with trim hips that broadened up into the exquisite expanse of his shoulders, testing the seams of his linen shirt. He moved toward Nicholas, his pace unhurried as he approached, but there was power and purpose in his stride, the muscles of his thighs taut beneath dark trousers. Nicholas let his eyes trace up the soldier’s body to his face as he drew close enough to examine. He was clean shaven, with a jaw like the head of an axe and a thicket of nut brown hair tousled by the chill wind. The eyes that returned Nicholas’s appraising look were the clear green of a deep summer forest, decorated with a rakish scar slicing through one dark brow. The ancients in their epics could scare have summoned a greater paragon of manhood than this.

Nicholas forced his mouth closed and donned a smirk instead, as the soldier came to a stop a scant few paces away. He was steaming, of all ridiculous things, a faint mist rising from his heated flesh into the frigid air of the winter afternoon. He met Nicholas’s gaze with an unwavering stare of his own, displaying no sign of acknowledgement that he was in the presence of nobility.

It made Nicholas’s heart beat a giddy little reel, but he summoned all the haughty authority of his upbringing into the tilt of a single brow and asked, “What do you want?”

The soldier’s eyes dropped at last, but it was far from the overdue show of deference Nicholas’s expected. His gaze scraped down Nicholas’s form, dragging a wave of heat to the surface of his skin, before slowly returning to his face. It was shockingly bold, setting Nicholas’s loins humming as effectively as a physical touch.

“You were watching us from up there.” Green eyes darted to the parapet above, then back to Nicholas. “Now you’re down here.”

His voice was a wonder unto itself, a rumble like the sound of mountains shifting. Nicholas forced down a shudder and deliberately adopted the same even tone. “Your skills of observation are most impressive.”

“Do you need assistance?”

“What assistance is it that you think you could possibly offer me?” Nicholas challenged him, opening the door for what was sure to be a clumsy seduction.

The soldier’s face shifted for the first time, a bare twitch at the corner of his mouth. He remained silent, letting the obvious invitation pass unremarked. It threw Nicholas off his stride, and for a moment he wondered whether he had made a rare error of judgment, but another possibility occurred to him.

Intrigued, he tried another tack, putting a pout into his voice and an inviting cant to his hips. “This cold just has become so unbearable. I thought a bit of exertion might do to warm me.”

The soldier’s smile grew infinitesimally wider. “You seek instruction?”

“Oh, no,” Nicholas purred, delighted to have found the thread. “I am well schooled already, but a companion in my labors would not go amiss.”

He stepped in close to the soldier, into the aura of warmth that emanated from his body. This close, Nicholas could smell him, leather and oil and fresh sweat. He looked up into the soldier’s face, in time to witness the way his pupils widened at Nicholas's proximity. There was power in this, this simple attraction without guile or pretense, and a heady delight that bubbled from him in a throaty chuckle.

“I think you will do nicely.” He stepped back, deliberately careless as he said, “unless you have other obligations?”

The response was immediate. “None.”

“Wonderful.” Nicholas smiled, head tilted in invitation. “Then show me where you go when you wish for a bit of privacy.”

The soldier looked at him a moment longer, considering him in a way that made Nicholas wonder what expectations he might have had when he approached. Then he nodded and said simply, “This way.”

Nicholas trailed a few paces behind him, so that he could admire the shift and play of the soldier’s broad back and the firm curves of his shapely rear as he led Nicholas through the deserted yard. The cold had driven everyone who might have questioned them indoors. They passed the barracks unchallenged and carried on toward a long building at the far end of the bailey. The soldier opened the door for Nicholas, ushering him into a narrow room with an almost courtly gesture. It was lit only by the thin winter light that filtered through the leaded windows, piled with tack and smelling faintly of horse. In a glance, Nicholas took in the racks of dusty bridles, the saddles on their stands, and forced away the memories they conjured.

“How charming,” he remarked as he turned. The soldier had to bend to fit through the low door. He closed it behind him and stood to his full height, his hair nearly brushing the beams of the roof above. In the cramped space, he was an undeniably intimidating presence.

“In here.” He pushed past Nicholas on his way to the back of the room, a fleeting first touch. The awareness that they were alone now, away from the castle's eyes, set Nicholas’s skin abuzz with a hint of danger that echoed in his loins. They were set upon this course now, and the inevitability of it, the pretense of cordiality when they both knew what lay just ahead was a wicked tease. He had missed the sweet anticipation of it.

He followed through into another room that was much airier than the first. A high bench stood at its center, and displayed upon it a lone saddle, far superior to its brethren in the other room. Even in the low light, he could observe the fine tooled leather and pattern of inlaid silver.

“Is this to your taste?”

The soldier was close, a looming presence at his back. Nicholas turned to face him. His eyes were not quite level with the soldier’s chin. Rather than crane his neck, Nicholas looked up at him through his lashes, affecting a coquettish smile.

“I cannot say for certain. Perhaps a closer examination might help me decide.” He reached out and cupped his hand over the bulge at the juncture of the soldier’s legs, sizing him up with a sure touch, and was sincerely delighted by what he found. “Oh my. You are something special.”

The soldier’s eyes dropped closed, and when they opened they were darker than before. He took a breath like a bellows, nostrils flaring.

“Yes, this is very much to my taste.” Nicholas gave him a lingering clasp, and was startled to find himself pressed suddenly back against the bench. The sharp edge of it caught him at the base of his spine as hard hands closed on his hips. His arm was trapped between them, his palm pressed tight to the impressive manhood.

His heart leapt, and he sucked in a startled breath, only to have his lungs filled at once with the intoxicating scent of the soldier’s body. Nicholas’s knees trembled, and his mouth began to water. He longed to stretch out his tongue and taste the tantalizing strip of skin scant inches from his nose.

He gathered himself with an effort of will, refusing to succumb so easily to that forceful treatment, but it was clear he had already baited the beast too far. He knew how the lower orders preferred their trysts, quick and rough and, though he would hardly admit it, exactly what he desired in that moment. He extracted his hand from between their bodies and reached into his pocket to retrieve the vial of oil secreted there. It was a slender cylinder of glass, delicate and discreet, and he thrilled to press it into the soldier’s rough hand, impatient to see it sullied as he was impatient to be sullied himself.

“You know what to do with that?”

“Yes.” It was more growl than human speech, and the rumble of it set Nicholas snatching for his robes.

The soldier released him but did not step back, hovering close as Nicholas hitched the long fall of velvet up around his hips and slipped his thumbs into his hose to slide them down. The soldier watched all of this with intense interest, fondling the vial idly in his surprisingly sensitive fingers. Nicholas shoved him back far enough that he could turn and brace himself against the bench with an inviting waggle of his hips. The cold air assaulted his bare skin, but he had hardly a moment to rue it before two vast palms spread hot across the small of his back. They smoothed along his flanks, spreading a delicious warmth that drew a knot of heat to the core of him and a rush of blood to his cock, before two insistent thumbs parted his flesh and delved searchingly between.

“I’ve already done all the work for you,” he forced out from within the deepening haze of arousal. “You can get on with it. Use the oil on yourself. I do not tolerate spittle on my arse.”

The hands stilled, then withdrew, letting the sobering cold creep back as Nicholas struggled to think what detail he had might have missed. He glanced back over his shoulder. The soldier was looking at him with a mild hint of a frown.

“You have done this before, haven’t you?” Nicholas asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t need instructions?”

“No.”

Nicholas let his head drop, blowing out a sigh and wondering if this would all end in frustration. “Yes. No. If you’re incapable of speech you could at least….”

He was shocked to silence by the sudden press of a truly impressive endowment against his back. For such a large man, the soldier could move with remarkable alacrity when he chose. Nicholas swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat, beset by an unusual moment of doubt that was ultimately no match for the wash of pure want that had him pressing back into the massive weapon about to be applied to him. It shifted, sliding down, down until the blunt end of it could press its way into his body.

Nicholas was no stranger to the sensation of a man’s cock inside him. It was more than a decade since this act had held any mystery. Or so he had thought, for the stretch of the soldier’s cock threatened to tear his composure to ribbons as it slid in slow and inexorable, more than he had ever taken before. It was perfect. There was a pause, a broad hand on his back holding him steady, but Nicholas had asked no quarter and wanted none.

“Keep going, damn you,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

The soldier did as ordered, a moment of retreat before he was advancing again. By the time his thighs were pressed flush to Nicholas’s skin, he was stuffed to bursting, his spinning head unable to construct a coherent thought. Thankfully, the soldier needed no further instruction. He grasped Nicholas firm by the hips as he pulled away and drove back inside of him in a powerful thrust. Nicholas was appalled to hear his voice escape him in a plaintive whine. He clenched his fist on the bench and cursed himself silently, his pleasurable trance shattered as he braced for the inevitable taunt or ribald comment from the man behind him.

None came. Nicholas dared to hope that his small lapse had passed unnoticed and clenched his jaw to avoid humiliating himself again. He refused to writhe and moan like a whore, for this man or any. His pleasure would be on his own terms. He shoved back onto the soldier’s cock with a snarl, taking the sensation he wanted. The soldier met him on the next thrust, matching his pace as they began to move in earnest.

It was hard and merciless, no pretense of propriety to mask the animal lust as they chased their pleasure, only the stark sound of their bodies meeting and their heavy breaths that flowed gradually into harmony as they found their rhythm. The soldier held Nicholas steady, so Nicholas released the bench to reach for his own aching cock.

His hand was caught and shoved away, but he had not even a moment to protest before a hot grip closed around him. It worked him fast and hard, tighter than he usually preferred, but exactly what he needed to match the pummeling he was receiving from the other side.

The soldier said something, a sound like distant thunder to Nicholas’s addled ears. It was two more shuddering thrusts before he managed to gasp, “What?”

“Inside you?” the soldier asked again, breathless in a way that sent a flush of pride through Nicholas, though his words were a riddle.

“Yes,” he said automatically, too far gone to care. “Yes.”

Then Nicholas’s feet were leaving the ground, two massive arms wrapped around him as the soldier shoved inside him in one final mighty thrust, and his cock began to pulse inside Nicholas. Understanding came over Nicholas, what he had been asked, what permission he had granted, and he abruptly shattered. His head snapped back, a cry tearing free as his climax ripped through him with the suddenness of a whip crack. It poured out of him, as fast as he was being filled, until he could do no more than dangle limp where he was held.

The soldier lowered him back down to his feet some unknown span of time later, breaking the sweet lethargy that had come over Nicholas as he slowly pulled away. Nicholas could not completely contain his wince as the massive cock slipped free of his body, but he covered it with a stretch. He stood as steady as he could, licking his lips and sweeping his damp hair to one side of his neck.

The wall of incandescent heat reappeared suddenly at his back. A nose pressed up beneath his freshly exposed ear and a rush of cold air scoured his neck as the soldier drew a deep breath.

Nicholas’s knees went distinctly watery, but he told himself it was only the lingering effects of his climax as he asked coolly, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You smell good,” the deep voice rumbled against him, words bursting warm against his skin.

Nicholas forced a laugh, unnerved by the unexpected intimacy of it. He reached down to slide his hose back into place, turning to force the soldier to step away. “You really are a simple creature, aren’t you?”

The soldier cupped a large hand around Nicholas’s jaw and smudged the rough pad of his thumb slowly along his Nicholas’s lower lip.

“Is that what you think?” There was a faint burr to the quiet words, something intent in his mesmerizing green gaze. His other hand caressed Nicholas’s flank, kneading slowly at his hip.

Nicholas stared back at him, trapped by the force of that look. He was wrong. He had been wrong from the start. There was depth to this man, a power and hunger just barely caged, and Nicholas wanted suddenly to see it unleashed, consequences be damned.

He never had been able to let a mystery go unsolved.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Thomas,” the soldier replied.

“Thomas.” Nicholas said it slowly, testing the shape of it in his mouth. “Would you come back with me to my chambers, Thomas?”

“Has something happened in your chambers that you wish to report?” Thomas asked, a slight tilt to his head.

“Not yet,” Nicholas said, letting a shade of honest invitation color his smile, “but there might be something there which requires your attention.”

Thomas bent his head down and spoke low into Nicholas’s ear. “Then I am at your service.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for consensual m/m sex.


	2. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for chapter warnings (spoilers).

The more civilized surroundings of sumptuous chambers did nothing to tame Thomas’s imposing presence, and Nicholas began to doubt the wisdom of the invitation. The soldier stood in the center of Nicholas’s private quarters, effortlessly dominating the space as he surveyed the room with a slow gaze. It made Nicholas feel somehow more exposed than he had at any previous point in their decidedly unusual encounter, and he had an absent thought that had he chosen to release a wild bear into his sanctuary he might have achieved a similar effect.

He stood behind Thomas, his back to the door and one hand secure on the handle, prepared to evict the lout at once should he dare make any disparaging comment on what he observed with the assessing sweep of his eyes. He braced himself as Thomas turned to the tangled sprawl of the bedclothes and, beyond it, the wardrobe doors hanging agape to reveal Nicholas’s collection of robes.

A rainbow of hues, wrought in only the finest fabrics, Nicholas prized each and every one. He had burned the drab cassock consigned to him by the abbey the very day he arrived in London, spent the first coins earned on his own merit to rid himself of that final vestige of the tyranny of the prison to which his father had seen fit to exile him. They were the symbol of his liberation, and he would tolerate no insult against them.

“Have you no servant?”

The question, so very far from what he anticipated, startled Nicholas loose of his defensive stance. “I forbid the chambermaid entering except upon my express order,” he explained. “She insisted on disturbing my papers no matter how many times I instructed her not to.”

Thomas’s gaze moved on, to take in the great table and the tumble of parchment that littered its surface. His eyes narrowed, and he moved toward the table to inspect it more closely. Nicholas’s eyes followed the fascinating way the muscles of Thomas’s thighs bunched beneath the thin hide of his trousers with each unhurried step, but swallowed the burgeoning desire down as Thomas spun a sheet of scratched notes to face him with the tip of one blunt finger.

His brow furrowed. “Is this poetry?”

“It is.” Nicholas’s hand closed more firmly on the door handle, as he waited with a sinking dismay for the inevitable denunciation that must follow.

“You wrote it?”

“I translated it,” Nicholas corrected him.

Thomas’s eyes jumped from the parchment to Nicholas, luminous green eyes pinning him where he stood. “Remarkable.”

Nicholas scoffed to mask the shiver that predator gaze sent racing over his skin. “You’re not about to confess to harboring a secret passion for Gallic verse, are you?”

The corner of Thomas’s mouth twitched. He shook his head. “I have no skill with words.”

There was no condemnation in it, no judgment implied on what was or was not a fit occupation for a man. Only a statement of fact, and perhaps an overture that Nicholas was delighted to accept. He let a smirk curl his lip and canted his hips out away from the door. “And in what discipline is it, then, that your skills lie?”

Thomas answered Nicholas’s smirk with one of his own and left the table to approach the door. Nicholas felt him before he arrived, the weight and heat of his presence emanating out beyond his physical form. He pressed his shoulders back into the wood of the door to steady himself as his knees wavered, but it only made him conscious of his position, trapped between the looming soldier and the solid barrier.

His blood began to itch in his veins, surging to the beat of his heart in a way that made him acutely conscious of the throbbing ache between his legs that Thomas had put there. That Nicholas had allowed him to put there. He distracted himself with a taunting, “I suppose if I wish to have someone messily dispatched I should seek out your services?”

Thomas stood just before Nicholas, his hands at his sides, looking down at him with that hypnotic green gaze. His voice resonated in the narrow space between them as he asked, “Do you?”

“Do I what? Wish someone dispatched?”

“Yes.”

Nicholas almost laughed, but Thomas’s face betrayed no amusement. His offer appeared perfectly frank. Nicholas licked his lips and was gratified when Thomas’s eyes instantly dropped to follow that movement.

“Not at this precise moment.”

“Then what do you want?”

Thomas’s eyes were still intent upon his mouth, in a way that told Nicholas clearly enough what the brute wanted from him. Nicholas bristled, his indignation returning at the casual presumption of that look, manifesting itself in defiance.

“I want you to take off your clothes,” he said imperiously.

Thomas met his eyes again. He betrayed no disappointment, only reached up and began to undo the laces of his shirt. He did not step away from Nicholas as he pulled the garment off over his head in one brusque motion. It sent a burst of air feathering across Nicholas’s cheeks, bearing upon it the warm, musky aroma of the soldier’s skin. Nicholas leaned into it on instinct, breathing in the delicious scent as his hands reached out of their own accord to splay across the exquisite form revealed.

Nicholas could have wept with the perfection of him. Thomas paused with his hands on his belt as Nicholas’s palms skated over layers of taut muscle beneath warm skin carpeted with a glorious pelt of dark hair. The shape of it echoed the taper of his waist, laying a trail down into his trousers that Nicholas dearly wished to follow.

“Go on,” he said, indifferent to the throaty rasp of his voice.

He stared, mesmerized by the way the vast expanse of Thomas’s shoulders and arms shifted as he dispensed with his belt and shoved his trousers down so that he could step out of them. Nicholas took a steadying breath before he looked down, but it did not stop his throat closing as he laid eyes on the soldier’s cock for the first time. It was already risen, or so Nicholas dearly hoped, for he could scarcely believe the massive bulk of it had ever fit inside him as it was. He let his hands take its measure, tracing a thumb along the vein standing out from sleek skin, and ventured down to weigh heavy bollocks in his palm.

“How are you even possible?” he murmured, half to himself, as Thomas’s cock stood improbably taller beneath his touch.

Large hands closed around Nicholas’s wrists, firm but not painful, breaking the trance that had come over him. Above his head, Thomas’s voice rumbled out, “What now?”

Nicholas looked up into eyes gone inky with lust. The soldier’s stare was firmly fixed on his mouth again, intent in a way that made Nicholas’s pride swell even as it fueled the fire in his belly.

“Actually,” he said breezily, “I wouldn’t mind having my cock sucked.”

He put a deliberately cold smirk on his face as he said it. Nicholas knew what men of Thomas’s ilk believed about their place in the order of things. He meant it as a challenge, an easy victory over the stubborn lout, to force him to retreat and prove that Nicholas was not so easy a mark as he presumed. He expected Thomas to balk, to take offense, perhaps to finally reveal his true colors and force Nicholas to his will. What he did not expect was for Thomas to drop at once to his knees.

Nicholas gaped astounded at the colossus humbled at his feet, though Thomas did not seem to think it much of a humiliation as he set to work undoing Nicholas’s stays and laces with surprisingly deft hands. He was expedient, shifting the layers of cloth just enough to draw Nicholas out into his careful hold. He glanced up at Nicholas once, midnight green eyes more arresting than they had any right to be and the faintest hint of amusement in the quirk of his lip. Nicholas had just time to comprehend how soundly he had been defeated in this particular bout before Thomas bent his head and closed his mouth around Nicholas’s cock.

Nicholas swore heartily, filth pouring from his mouth of the sort that would have earned him a lengthy personal sermon not so very long ago. The blasphemy was joyful, as was the utter profanity of the act itself, the drowning heat and implacable drag of the soldier’s mouth around him. His body arched up of its own accord, but hands like stone seized his hips and drove him back down against the door, holding him restrained. Nicholas fisted both hands in the soldier’s hair in retaliation, though he was not sure what he meant to accomplish by it. Thomas would heed no rein, headstrong as a young stallion. He kept up his determined assault, slowing only when Nicholas’s knees began to tremble in earnest.

Thomas paused to shift his hold, lifting Nicholas’s leg and hooking it over his shoulder. Then he did the same to the other, and Nicholas’s world tilted as he was abruptly parted from solid ground.

“What?” The single word was all he managed before Thomas returned to his task with renewed vigor. Nicholas gasped out an astonished laugh as Thomas held him that way, suspended in air with his knees draped over the solid planes of broad shoulders and his booted heels knocking against the soldier’s back.

Broad palms cradled the sensitive skin of his rump, work roughened fingers teasing along the valley between his legs even as they supported his weight. The touch was subtle at first, a slow knead that made his thighs shudder with the pleasure that stalked ever closer upon him. Then hot fingers seized his flesh with sudden force, just as Thomas’s mouth pulled tight, and Nicholas’s senses rushed away and then came roaring back.

He cried out helplessly, his body curling down over Thomas’s crown as his arms closed tight about the soldier’s head and he spilled himself down his throat. Thomas did not pull away, though Nicholas must surely be suffocating him with the drape of his body, instead worked Nicholas’s spent cock gently in his mouth, easing him through the shuddering final eddies of climax.

It was only when Nicholas found strength to lift his head that Thomas released him. He was heaving and blowing like a courser after a chase, sweat beaded at his temples and dampening his hair, but his hands were steady as ever as he sat back on his heels and lowered Nicholas slowly down to rest on his knees. Nicholas collapsed in a sprawl, legs splayed indecently wide and head lolling against the door as he stared at the soldier’s glorious form, the formidable cock standing red and rampant between them.

He reached out with both hands, giving into the urge to slide his fingers into Thomas’s short chestnut locks, tousling the matted fringe so that it stood in wild spikes. He smirked at the result, until Thomas bent his head down, looming so close that their noses nearly brushed. “Something else you wanted?”

His breath burst over Nicholas’s lips as he spoke, the rumble of his voice shivering through Nicholas’s quivering body. Nicholas’s heart danced a jig in his breast as his cock revived in an improbable twitch. He dared to brush a finger over the scar that cleaved Thomas’s strong brow in two, down across the corner of the delicate lid. Thomas’s eyes closed as his touch passed, then reopened, ravenous and intent behind the barest final vestige of restraint. It was refreshing, in its way, this encounter free of coy games and veiled pretense. This man wanted him, openly, unashamedly. He waited, as he had in the yard, waited only for Nicholas to admit to wanting the same.

In that moment, Nicholas knew that if this was indeed a battle of wills then defeat was a pleasure in which he would happily revel. He clenched his hands in Thomas’s hair and growled, “Take me already, damn you.”

That was all that was required to snap the chain. Thomas lunged to his feet, lifting Nicholas as though he weighed nothing, and turned to cross the room in three determined strides. He toppled Nicholas onto the bed and dispossessed him of his boots with a single firm tug to each. Meanwhile, Nicholas wrestled frantically with the remaining stays of his robe. He freed his arms and cast it aside just as Thomas stripped his hose from him. Then sure hands grasped him by the ankles and flipped him over in one decisive maneuver.

It was at once the most alarming and the most arousing manhandling he had ever had the pleasure to receive. His arms went traitorously weak, but he bit down on the moan throbbed in his chest and hastened to brace his knees beneath him. Those same hands, hot and powerful, grasped his hips and tugged him back, forcing his rump down nearly far enough to touch his feet. The pose forced his legs to bend tight beneath him, his knees pressed out to either side of his ribs.

Nicholas’s breath huffed out of him on a gasp, and he braced for a brutal penetration, but the touch that followed was not at all what he expected. The callused pads of two fingers slid slick across his exposed hole, slow and firm. The sweet pleasure that quivered to life in his gut was unnerving in its delicacy, so Nicholas swore again and thrust his hips back to force those fingers inside him.

At least, that was his intent, but no sooner had he tried to rise than the heel of that same teasing hand settled at the base of his spine and forced him back down. Thomas held him effortlessly in place with just that single hand, and with the crippling pleasure of the skillful motions with which he made Nicholas ready to receive the rest of him. He stroked and coaxed, sliding his fingers deep one moment, only to withdraw them a moment later and play about the edges again, each new touch the opposite of what Nicholas anticipated from the last.

“Damn you,” Nicholas cursed him with tears of frustrated lust stinging at the corners of his eyes. He pressed his face to the bedding to hide them and spat out, “Get on with it already.”

Either Thomas had at last seen fit to take pity on him, or his own patience had been exhausted, for the next thing Nicholas knew the mattress shuddered and dipped beneath him and then there was only the heat and the pressure as Thomas finally gave him his cock. He did not rush, but neither did he pause, his smothering weight bearing down on Nicholas’s hips as he drove into him with ruthless efficiency.

Nicholas gasped for breath as the thick bulk of it pierced him, pressing up and up until he was certain that he could feel Thomas in the back of his throat. Then Thomas pulled back, and drove into him again, both hands on Nicholas’s hips to brace him. He struck at the perfect angle, and immediately did it again, sending excruciating shocks of ecstasy slicing through Nicholas’s body. Nicholas nearly scrambled away, the pleasure too much for his embattled being to bear, but he had nowhere to flee. He was trapped by Thomas’s hands, and Thomas was determined now, set on his course with victory in his sights. The thrust and retreat of his body was steady as the beat of a battering ram, driving helpless tears to Nicholas’s eyes and curling his hands to claws that threatened to rend the blankets to pieces.

Thomas’s thick forearm settled beside his face as he abruptly sped his pace, his breath pouring hot over Nicholas’s nape with each panted breath, and the last clinging thread of Nicholas’s dignity snapped. He was covered, ravished, dominated and utterly undone. He shattered that way, howling out his ecstasy into the bedclothes like an untried novice. He hardly had time to care, for Thomas was pouring himself out into his body again, the hot pulse of his seed punctuated by the final lazy thrusts of his hips.

Nicholas took all of it, drifting in a state of spent paralysis. He twitched as he felt Thomas pull away, noted distantly the sudden twinge as his aching legs were eased out from beneath his body. Thomas stretched them out so that he was sprawled on his stomach.

“Are you alright?” Thomas asked.

Nicholas did not reply. He could not speak, nor even show his face, ashamed of what the aftermath of his ruin must look like. He felt the bed lift as Thomas rose, and tried to ignore the shattered feeling of sudden loss. He tried not to listen, to wait for the sound of the door, or to think about that moment when he would have to rise and go about the inelegant business of putting himself to rights.

“Have you no water?”

Thomas’s voice startled him, unexpectedly close.

“The girl brings it,” Nicholas muttered into the bedclothes.

“The girl you sent away?” There might have been a hint of a laugh in his voice, but Nicholas did not look to confirm it.

“Yes, I suppose,” he sighed wearily.

His eyes flew open and his head shot up as two hot hands closed suddenly on his rump, parting his flesh. He turned to glare at Thomas over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Making certain I didn’t hurt you.” Thomas bent down to inspect him, and the rush of humiliation would have been enough to send Nicholas fleeing from the bed, had he only possessed the strength to stand.

He kicked at Thomas with one heel and snarled, “I’m no delicate maiden flower in need of coddling.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of coddling.” Thomas said quietly. He climbed up to lay his great bulk down beside Nicholas once more, stroking a broad, hot hand up and down Nicholas’s back. Nicholas sniffed and hid his face in the bedclothes again, but he let Thomas do as he pleased. The touch was unexpectedly soothing, as was the slow sound of the soldier’s deep, steady breaths, and slowly, the fractured feeling within Nicholas began to recede, the seams that Thomas had split open sealing themselves back up again.

His heart calming, Nicholas turned his face to peek at Thomas with one eye, wary still of what an unsightly mess he must be. Thomas looked back at him, his face serious and focused on Nicholas.

“How is it that some comely country mouse hasn’t snapped you up before now?”

Thomas shrugged one massive shoulder. “Never cared for them.”

“So you’ve made a habit of seducing your betters?”

“Never cared for them either.”

“Then what on earth possessed you to approach me?”

There was a distinct smile on Thomas’s face now, an unexpected gentleness to his eyes. “You looked very fine. Like a painting.”

Nicholas snorted. “If you are about to compare me to an etching or some such rubbish, you will be out on your ear.”

“No, not an etching.” Thomas’s brow twitched. “An illumination. All color and ornament. Unique.”

Nicholas stared at him, startled by the bare eloquence of the words, and the rush of warmth they sent billowing through him. He preened to cover it, tilting up a brow in an answering tease. “So you thought I looked fine?”

Thomas’s hand shifted up over his shoulder to cup his jaw, his eyes lidded as he leaned down close. “You know you do.”

It was more than Nicholas could resist. Before he could stop himself, he had surged up that last inch to crush their lips messily together. One long, glorious press before reason returned and he jumped back, appalled at his own juvenile blunder. He had hardly time to regret before Thomas followed. The hand on Nicholas’s jaw turned hard, holding him firm as his mouth came down on Nicholas’s. His kiss was as overwhelming as the rest of him, his thick tongue sliding into Nicholas’s mouth, slow and inexorable. Nicholas fell back beneath him, fisting his hands in Thomas’s hair again as he sucked on the hot flesh Thomas pressed into him.

They broke apart on a gasp, and Nicholas watched in fascination as Thomas’s eyes locked hungrily on his mouth.

“Is that what you wanted all along?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes.”

“You could have said something!”

“I got it in the end.” Thomas smirked.

His hand slid around Nicholas’s throat, broad palm settling warm and careful as his thumb and forefinger forced Nicholas’s face up for another kiss. Nicholas let his head fall back, laughing, until Thomas licked the smile from his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for consensual m/m sex.


	3. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for chapter warnings (spoilers).

In the cold light of dawn, alone in his bed, Nicholas at last had leisure to fathom the depth of his own folly.

His actions of the night before rose before his mind’s eye like bubbles of noxious gas, each more appalling than the last. Was it truly he who had invited a common soldier to enter his private chambers? He who had mewled and moaned so shamelessly beneath the dullard as though such a pose were anything other than an insult to his noble person? He who had lost his wits so completely as to actually allow that kiss, as though their momentary dalliance could ever be mistaken for something more?

Surely not.

Nicholas physically recoiled from the memories, spine curling as he buried his face in the bedclothes, but there no escaping the truth, not when his body still pulsed with the proof of bruised lips, the stinging burn where rough whiskers had scoured the inner slopes of his thighs, the throbbing ache that reached nearly to the heart of him. Even the sheets betrayed him, saturated with the tantalizing scent of the soldier’s body, though Thomas had taken his leave long before the windows began to pale.

Nicholas shoved them away with both hands and leapt from the bed, stalking across the room to snatch out a robe that bore no trace of Thomas’s bedamned presence. He fled the chamber without a backward glance, his stays askew, sacrificing his dignity in favor of preserving what tattered threads remained of his sanity, and retreated to the sanctuary of the archives. The quiet there immediately calmed his nerves, the smell of parchment and aged leather, the lazy motes of dust that swirled around him. This was his domain, more so than the chambers where he slept. He alone had authority to dictate order here, by mandate of the king himself, and he set about doing so, wishing all the while that the impulses of his heart were so easily tamed.

There was work to be done, an encroaching fever upon which to focus his energies, and eventually the welcome distraction of Oscar and his incurable insolence. Nicholas decided that the most fitting punishment for his appalling lack of respect would be to drag him before the council, a collection of intractable relics whose ideas were, on the whole, nearly as antiquated as their wardrobes. So that was what he would do, though of course he could not allow Oscar to make a complete fool of himself, lest it reflect poorly on his skills as a teacher.

The task of preparing their report was enough to prevent his mind from dwelling overmuch on his humiliation, at least until he returned to his chambers after the evening meal and found them untouched since the morning, the bed a tumble and clothing strewn about, just as they had fallen when he flung them off in his haste to disgrace himself. Memory sprang upon him unawares, setting his knees trembling. He stepped backwards out of the room, as though his soiled robes might leap up and give chase, and let the door fall closed.

An ache rose in his chest, as familiar as it was detested, that fierce and sudden longing for a thing that he could not have. He waited for it pass, standing stone still in the corridor, then turned and walked away. He returned to the abandoned archives, where he lit a single candle and read over the notes that Oscar had prepared. That bitter, spiteful part of him that seemed to grow larger as the years passed secretly hoped to find fault with them, but Oscar had done his job well.

He acquitted himself equally well at council the following morning, thanks in no small part to Cedric, who in Nicholas’s private estimation must either possess the patience of a saint or else indulge a secret habit of murdering small woodland creatures in his spare hours. He was a true oddity, younger than the rest, of debatable pedigree, and as like as not to keep his own counsel in that company. Despite all of that, the king made no secret of the fact that he placed great stock by Cedric’s judgment, and at least he could be relied upon to be generally worth engaging in conversation, with a surprisingly sly wit carefully concealed behind his pleasant manner.

Perhaps it was that which had allowed him to cast such a spell over Oscar that Oscar’s face lit with unconcealed joy at the mere sight of him, though the council was called early and they could not have been parted for more than a handful of hours. Nicholas had not often had occasion to observe them together in any context, but there in the audience chamber where they could not speak freely, the easy way they read one another’s intentions and gestures was in clear evidence to any who cared to take note.

A twinge of unreasoning jealously dug in its tiny claws, but it was quickly eclipsed by an unbidden thought, as Nicholas wondered what expression Thomas might wear were Nicholas to appear before him unexpected, and so soon. A ridiculous musing, as he already knew the answer, had witnessed that particular mix of indifference and forbearance, tinged on occasion with annoyance, on the face of more than one erstwhile companion. There were lines that did not bear crossing, and consequences for failing to respect the reasonable bounds that governed such things in a world so small and contained as the king’s tower. Besides which, he reminded himself, soldiers talked. No doubt the entire garrison had been regaled with the sordid details within moments of Thomas’s return, triumphant in his conquest. No doubt they were laughing that very moment at his expense.

Yet still, despite all that experience spoke reason, he still failed to tame the weakest parts of him that dared to posit a future in which he was welcomed with even half as much warmth as that which shone in Oscar’s eyes for Cedric, when he might become so attuned to another as to know his very thoughts. Willingly or not, Nicholas felt himself beginning that slow march down the familiar path to ruin, what was meant to be an easy distraction turned into a new obsession. So he went, around and around in his own futile little purgatory.

It drove him out to the parapet once the council was released, against his better judgment, back to that private perch overlooking the training grounds. The soldiers were gathered there, as they were every day, sparring in pairs in the blistering cold. Thomas had never particularly stood out to him among them before, though Nicholas had on more than one occasion amused himself perusing their ranks from this very vantage, but now Nicholas’s eyes were drawn to him as if by a lure, fixed to the broad form towering head and shoulders above most of his fellows.

From this distance, Nicholas could not make out his most striking features, the blunt sculpted edges of his jaw, the mesmerizing green of his eyes, or the scar that magnified the predatory power of his gaze, but his memory helpfully supplied these details. Thomas moved with the smooth grace of a hunter, easy in his body and its physicality in a way that Nicholas had often envied but never quite possessed. Matters of the mind were his natural element, abstractions and words where he was at his most nimble. He could vanquish his intellectual rivals with little more than a casual thought, but put a sword in his hand and he was worse than useless, more a danger to himself than his enemy.

Nicholas watched Thomas handily best his opponent, disarming him and sweeping his legs out from under him in one fluid motion. A breath of a sigh escaped Nicholas’s lungs as he leaned down over the frozen stone of the wall to watch Thomas offer the other soldier his hand and tug him back to his feet as though he weighed no more than a child. Then Thomas turned, looked back over his shoulder, directly at the parapet, and a shock ran through Nicholas’s body as though he had been struck by lightning. He staggered back, his heart pounding, and prayed that he had not been recognized.

He took a deep breath, released it in a billowing cloud. He was far too old, far too versed in the futility of it, to spend his time mooning like a lovestruck maiden, no matter how ridiculously attractive the object of that fixation might be. He resolved himself to let sense rule for once, and let it go before it all ended in ruin. He returned to his own room, where the chambermaid had at last deigned to perform her function. The wardrobe was closed, the bed neatly made with fresh linens, though as usual she had ignored his instruction not to disrupt the organization of his work table. His projects had been hopelessly jumbled, scrolls and papers stacked into a row of neat piles according to their size, of all idiotic things, with no consideration given as to which belonged with which.

Nicholas no longer had the energy even to be infuriated with her. At least her ineptitude had provided a task to occupy him, and he set to work sorting them out again. It was a painstaking process, as some of the older manuscripts were delicate. He inspected each for new damage as he set it in its proper place, and not for the first time wondered whether he should relocate the whole lot of it to the archives, where the only real danger was whatever comment Oscar might make about it. Nicholas’s pet passions did not really belong there, among the dry and dusty records of the kingdom, but his predecessor had left a respectable collection of rare volumes and personal works. Perhaps Nicholas could begin to build his own legacy in a similar fashion.

He reached for the next sheet of parchment, and stopped still as he realized what it was. His own cramped scratch stared back at him, jumbled by a hatch of crossed lines and messy corrections, the result of his prolonged struggle to capture the precise nuance of the verse, but before his eyes he could see only Thomas’s chiseled face, lit with frank admiration in reaction to this very page. 

A knock at the door jolted him from the reverie. Nicholas dropped the parchment to the table, and the memory with it, and went to answer. He threw open the door, hoping for the return of the idiot girl so that he could chide her for her inattentiveness, but stopped still as he spied his caller. For a moment all he could do was stare.

Then he gathered himself to demand, “What do you think you’re doing here?”

Thomas looked back at him, the hint of a smile hovering about his mouth. He was clad in a clean white shirt and leather jerkin, looking both unfairly handsome and perfectly ridiculous with a wooden cask that must easily weigh as much as Nicholas balanced upon one shoulder. He tapped the butt of the cask with the forefinger of his free hand. “I thought you might like to have this.”

Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, his fingers digging painfully hard into the wooden frame of the door. “That is tremendously presumptuous of you.”

Thomas said nothing, merely looked at him with a calm that made Nicholas acutely aware of his own petulant actions. How quickly he had become that which he feared, treating Thomas with a hostility that was as dishonest as it was undeserved.

He sighed and stepped back from the door. “Come inside, then, before someone sees you making a spectacle of yourself in the corridor.”

Thomas’s arm brushed against Nicholas as he passed, setting loose a prickle of excitement to dance across his skin. Nicholas shivered and closed the door. He crossed his arms over his chest as he turned to prevent himself taking any action that he might come to regret.

“If you imagine that I can be won over with whatever gutter brewed swill passes for wine down in the barracks, you are gravely mistaken.”

“Not wine.” Thomas rolled the cask from his shoulder and set it on the floor with a soft thump. He looked up at Nicholas with a smirk at the corner of his mouth. “Water.”

A laugh burst from Nicholas before he could swallow it, startled loose by the absurd practicality of the gift as much as the sweet flush of delight at the thought that had gone into it. Thomas smiled, an answering humor in his eyes that made Nicholas’s heart dance a little caper.

“You took your time about finding it,” he said breezily, wondering at how easily Thomas was able to disarm him, two days of tormented wondering faded to a distant echo in mere moments.

“I was on the gate yesterday,” Thomas explained. “No time.”

It was an uncomfortable reminder of the vastly different ranks they occupied, and Nicholas could not help but inquire, “Your comrades were amused by the tales of your exploits, I take it?”

Thomas’s head tilted as he stepped around the cask. He looked Nicholas in the eyes, searching and sincere as he approached. “I have not spoken of it.”

“Nor thought of it, I wager,” Nicholas countered.

“I did not say that.” Thomas was near enough now that Nicholas could feel the throb of his voice in the space between them. He did not object when Thomas reached out and curved his hand around Nicholas’s cheek, strong fingers threading into his hair as his palm settled on Nicholas’s jaw.

The warmth of that careful touch spread through Nicholas’s body, turning his insides to liquid in the most perfect way. He forced his eyes to remain open as he asked, “So you have thought of it?”

“Yes.”

Thomas was close. Too close, the solid force of his presence making it difficult for Nicholas to think. “When?”

“Constantly.”

Thomas looked down at him, open desire in his clear green eyes, and Nicholas’s resolve crumbled, all thoughts of propriety, of station, of sense scattered like so much dust.

“Damn it all to hell,” he breathed, as he reached up and dragged Thomas down to him.

The kiss felt like a blow, hard and forceful enough to steal the breath from his lungs. Thomas was hungry. His lips forced Nicholas’s open wide, firm tongue pressing in to scour against his in a delicious slide. There was no use denying the want between them any longer, but neither would Nicholas be so easily conquered this time. He gave as good as he got, devouring Thomas as he shoved against the firm wall of his chest to drive him backward. He snatched open the buttons on Thomas’s jerkin, the laces on his shirt, until his palms met warm bare skin. He scratched his nails along the sleek grooves of Thomas’s muscles, carded his fingers through crisp dark hair as he shoved Thomas’s clothing from his body and urged him down to the bed.

Thomas acquiesced, falling down onto his back as Nicholas wrenched open his belt and tore his trousers from him. Nicholas quickly shed his robe, kicking off his hose to climb up and straddle Thomas’s waist before he could lose the upper hand. Hot hands settled immediately on Nicholas’s thighs, sliding rough and possessive up to his grasp his hips as they stared at one another. Thomas was a paragon of masculinity, beautiful and vital in all the ways the ways a man should be, but it seemed he found something equally appealing in Nicholas’s form. His appreciation was plain in his hungry expression, the growing arousal that nudged at the small of Nicholas’s back.

Nicholas wanted him, would have him, and he would do so on his own terms. He planted one hand on Thomas’s chest and directed a narrow glare down at him. “Do not think for one second that you can make of me your woman.”

In answer, Thomas shifted his hand from Nicholas’s hip to press up between his legs, cupping Nicholas’s cock in the valley of his palm as nimble fingers gently rolled his bollocks. “No danger of that.”

Nicholas’s mouth fell open, his words stolen as his hips shifted of their own accord, curling up into the touch. Thomas’s smile was far too smug, so Nicholas seized his wrist and forced his hand further back. He laid his own hand along the back of Thomas’s and shoved his hips down until Thomas’s fingers were just where he wanted them. Thomas’s smile fell away, his eyes growing darker as Nicholas ground down against his touch. There was a jolt of lazy pleasure in it, but Nicholas was impatient to find the sensation he knew was possible.

He stretched up to retrieve his hidden vial of sweet oil. Thomas smoothed his hand up Nicholas’s side as he did, craning his head up to nip at Nicholas’s neck as it came within reach. Nicholas shivered, his eyes dropping closed for a moment, before he sat back and poured the oil out over Thomas’s fingers. Thomas needed no direction, but Nicholas kept hold of his wrist and forced him to stillness as he set the pace he wanted. The stretch was delicious, each hard knuckle a new burst of sensation as he settled his weight down onto Thomas’s trapped hand. He rose, letting them slide out at that same excruciating pace before he took them in again. Thomas worked with him, crooked his fingers to press and play, helping Nicholas along even as his own desire went neglected but not forgotten. Thomas’s cock prodded at Nicholas, trailing eager lines of moist seed across his skin.

Nicholas smiled down at him as he rode Thomas’s hand, flushed with the heady power of it. “Do you want me?”

“Yes,” Thomas growled out, the hand kneading at Nicholas’s thigh a message as clear as that single word.

“Good.”

Nicholas pulled up and off of Thomas’s hand, shifting his hips back in a single motion to seat himself on the magnificent pillar of his cock instead. Thomas groaned, his head falling back as Nicholas shuddered with the mingled pleasure and relief of it. He shifted his hips lazily, amazed that the formidable weapon that had seemed mere days ago to present an impossible challenge now seemed as natural as a key sliding into a lock.

He braced his knees beneath him to give him the angle he needed, hands flat on Thomas’s body. Nicholas might not be able to properly sit a horse, but in this, at least, he had perfect form. He wondered suddenly what his brothers would think of his preferred sport. The thought of them soured his mood instantly, and he pushed it away. Thomas was not them, possessed none of their haughty arrogance, none of their mocking disdain. He was an entirely different sort of man. There was humor in him, but it was kind, his pride was earned and honorable, his desire patient and generous.

It was for this that Nicholas chose to reward him, clasping Thomas as close inside him as he was able as he began to move. He set a demanding pace for himself, a rise and fall like the crash of a stormy sea on rocky coast. Even with Thomas’s hands helping to lift him, it was only a few short minutes before his thighs burned and his breath came short, but it was too good to surrender. He licked his lips and arched his body back, one hand clenched in his own hair to ground him as he bared his throat.

That, it happened, was finally too much for Thomas to resist. His rough hand slid around Nicholas’s side and braced between his shoulder blades as he rose up and lifted Nicholas with him. In one smooth, powerful maneuver he had turned them, and laid Nicholas back atop the furs to loom over him. Nicholas moaned at the sensation, long and low as his legs locked about Thomas’s back. It was pure instinct, seeking to anchor himself to keep from being dislodged, but the effect was enough to light a fiery blush in his cheeks. They were not meant to lie this way, face to face like newlyweds, like lovers. Thomas looked down at him, serious and intent even firmly in the grip of his arousal.

It was too much. Too close, too honest, and far, far too fast.

Nicholas tried to turn his face away, but Thomas had a hand in his hair. He used it to hold Nicholas still as his mouth came down on Nicholas’s, smothering him in another consuming kiss. Thomas rocked his hips, cock sliding in deep at the same moment as his tongue, both smooth and tender, as though Thomas might actually bear him some genuine emotion. Tears sprang to Nicholas’s eyes, all of it more than his embattled mind could bear.

He gave in to sensation instead, the heat all around him and the pound of heavy flesh inside him that fed the growing tension in his loins. He grasped at Thomas as it coiled tighter and tighter, until it abruptly burst apart, sending the fractured shards of thought flying out of reach. Thomas was close behind him, three more short, hard thrusts before Nicholas was inundated with that familiar warmth. Nicholas lay limp, adrift in the shocks of pleasure, lulled by the slowing synchrony of Thomas’s heartbeat against his own, the calming rhythm of his breaths.

Then a thought crystallized suddenly and his eyes snapped open.

“Off! Get off!” He unlocked his legs from about Thomas’s waist to kick at his hips instead, shoving him over with both hands.

“What?” Thomas grunted as he shifted out and off of Nicholas.

Nicholas shuddered at the abrupt withdrawal, but did not reply. He flew from the bed with single-minded purpose, stumbled on unsteady legs, but made it safely to the table and snatched up his quill. He dipped it quickly in ink with one hand as he turned his abandoned parchment to face him with the other. With a quaking hand, he scratched a line of verse across the top of it, speaking the words aloud to himself as he did. He stood straight, holding the parchment before him to read what he had written. The swell of satisfaction made him almost giddy, and he laughed.

“That’s it. Just the turn of phrase.” He turned to grin at Thomas. “You make a poet of me.”

Thomas had pushed himself up to sit with his back against the headboard, watching Nicholas with a bemused expression, but at Nicholas’s words he smiled, slow and warm. “Can you not write your poetry over here?”

Nicholas looked at the picture he made, a feast for the eyes with his hair a disheveled thatch and every inch of his physique on display, and had to laugh at the preposterousness of it all. His whole body was light in a way he had not felt in years, his steps buoyant as he scooped up the scroll, the battered translation, and his writing tools and carried the lot of it back to the bed with him. Thomas waited for him to set the inkwell down safely on the side table before he reached over to hook an arm around Nicholas’s waist and tug him in close. Nicholas folded his legs to support his scroll as he tucked himself into the curve of Thomas’s arm. He twisted around and elbowed at Thomas’s ribs, seeking a comfortable place to settle.

“This won’t work,” he sniffed. “You’re made of rocks.”

Thomas’s arm tightened around his shoulders. He buried his nose in Nicholas’s hair and hummed out a gusty sigh. “And you are made of willow boughs.”

“Oh.” Nicholas blinked at him, a flush of delight washing through him. It was the second time Thomas had proven to possess that unexpected eloquence, and Nicholas was intrigued at the thought of what elegance of thought he might yet be able to tease out. He leaned in close and traced the tip of his quill along Thomas’s throat, lowering his voice to a throaty murmur as he asked, “Would you like to see how far I can bend?”

“Yes.”

Only that, the stark honesty that Nicholas was coming to sincerely enjoy. He looked down at his scroll, then cast it aside. The verse would wait. For tonight, he would dedicate himself to the study of just how many ways they could make their bodies fit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for consensual m/m sex.


	4. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for chapter warnings (spoilers).

Nicholas was going to hell.

This was not, in itself, a new or remarkable truth. He had known his fate since the first morning he listened to the droning recitations of the priest in his family’s chapel, possessed of a sufficient mastery of Latin to make sense of their meaning, and immediately began to laugh. No chiding glance nor subtle pinch could quell the mirth that overflowed from him then, equal parts exhilaration at unlocking the mystery of a foreign tongue and incredulity at the ridiculousness of the words graced with such lofty ceremony.

He paid his penance for it later. His father never lowered himself to laying hands on his youngest son, at least not while he was still a child. That would come later, once Nicholas’s aberrations climbed into the realm of the truly unforgivable. Discipline of the scions of Cornwall fell instead to the master at arms, a dull-witted brute who bore Nicholas enough contempt in his own right to put a particular zeal into each swing of his arm. Even as Nicholas grit his teeth beneath the rod, he knew no regret.

A door was opened that day, a portal at once to Nicholas’s salvation and to his damnation. He was awakened to the rewards of a pursuit in which none of his brothers could hope to be his equal, a calling to truths that most men would never fathom. Yet that knowledge was poison to his faith, a ruin as complete as that which befell Adam when he ate from the tree and lost Eden. No longer could Nicholas swallow unquestioned the rules and strictures, the dictates and moralistic rantings. Banished from the garden of complacency, he was liberated to pursue a damnation of his own choosing.

Hell would be his fitting reward, he knew, but he had not expected it quite so soon, nor in such a guise as it took. For damnation this must surely be, the rapid descent into madness wreaked upon him by the frailties of his traitorous heart. His thoughts were a maelstrom, and he was captive to them, buffeted along in an endless spiral between unabated lust and mortified longing, and at the heart of that storm, occupying Nicholas’s every moment, was Thomas.

Such an unassuming name for one who now stood so large in Nicholas’s consciousness. Waking or sleeping, it was always Thomas. Thomas, who had the power to make Nicholas tremble and ache with no more than a look. Thomas, of so few words but such profound passions, who had mastered the signs and sounds of Nicholas’s body and spoke them back to him as though they were a language all their own. Thomas, whose touch he already knew had ruined him for any other.

There was only one affliction grave enough to so thoroughly estrange Nicholas from himself, to invade his mind and steal from him the clarity of thought that was the bedrock of his identity, the incisiveness that set him apart from common men. He knew this damnation, the sweet temptation of it, knew it but refused to name it, for it had nearly destroyed him once before. He could not let it do so again. It was an exquisite torture, to have such a man and know that he could never keep him

By day, Nicholas remembered this. He scolded himself that no good could come of the affair, made all manner of fierce resolutions, but when night fell and that soft tapping came at his door, they scattered like startled animals. Reason flew the moment Thomas drew near, and not his alone. There was need in Thomas also, an urgency poured directly into Nicholas’s being through hands and lips and eyes and hips. Enveloped in Thomas’s arms, draped over his back, stretched around his cock, soaked in their mingled sweat and seed, Nicholas knew nothing but the desire to surrender all that he was to the insidious power of it, to remain forever in that land apart with Thomas where there was only bliss.

At least as long as Thomas remained. It was never long enough. The soldier took his leave always under cover of darkness, allowing the doubt and longing to come creeping back with the dawn. It was not long before Nicholas’s distraction stole his ability to work, threatening not only his purpose but also his reputation, his energy consumed by endless hours spent wishing and wondering and wanting nothing more than to do neither.

It was only when he heard that Cedric had taken ill, and his first thought was elation that he might keep Thomas through the night if he had no duties in the morning, that Nicholas knew it he had allowed his madness to overtake him too far. Horrified at himself, Nicholas sat alone in his chambers and made up his mind.

That night, when the quiet knock came on his door, he did not open it. Though his body lit at once at the sound, as contemptibly trained to it now as a hound to the hunting horn, he bit his knuckle bloody and refused to answer. Thomas did not knock again, though Nicholas sat listening for it far longer than he should. That was the end of it, then.

Falling alone into his bed, Nicholas was cold and empty, but his eyes were dry. He curled beneath the blankets and told himself it was ridiculous to mourn for something that had never really been.

Then the next night, the polite tapping came again.

Nicholas startled in his chair. He stared at the door with a pounding heart, prayed that it did not open, hoped that it would.

It did not, and Thomas left as he had the night before, without a second knock.

Thomas never called out to him. He did not ask Nicholas why. He merely returned, every night, to tap softly at Nicholas’s door. Nicholas did not relent, though each night it grew harder to resist. Thomas might be persistent, but he was hardly a match for the aristocratic obstinacy bred into Nicholas’s very bones.

It was only that, and long practice at keeping his true thoughts from his face, that preserved his dignity when he arrived at the archives one morning and found Thomas standing as though he had any right to be there. Such brazen disregard for Nicholas’s very clear dismissal was intolerable. He raised his chin in indignant defiance of this provocation, swept past Thomas without comment and slammed the door behind him.

Only to dissolve into quiet panic the moment he was alone, racking his brain for some escape from the shambles he had made of his life that would leave him with even a modicum of his dignity intact. It was just his luck that Oscar chose that day to make his tardy appearance, and immediately called him out.

“I think you’re afraid.”

Were he any other man, Nicholas would have considered the words tantamount to a challenge to duel, but it was Oscar, and Oscar had never had the least sense for the respect he ought to show Nicholas. Perhaps it was Nicholas’s own fault for his lapses in judgment, a product of the secrets entrusted between them but never shared, never used in anger, despite their daily show of bickering hostility.

“You don’t need to be.”

Nicholas scowled at the table, and though Oscar was soon off on yet another unexplained errand, his words echoed. After all, was it not Nicholas who had first enjoined Oscar to bare his heart to his lover regardless of his fear and his doubts? If there was one thing Nicholas could not abide, it was a hypocrite. Doubly so one who was a coward. When hell came for him, let it not be said that he had not earned it.

He bolted to his feet and stalked to the door, not quite certain what he meant to do but convinced that he could not allow the question to stand unresolved any longer. He threw open the door and did not look at Thomas as he commanded him, “Come inside.”

Thomas obeyed, crossing the threshold into the archives at his own unhurried pace. Nicholas stepped back to allow him to pass before throwing the door closed behind him. Thomas turned, a looming presence in the narrow space between the shelves. Pale winter light threw shadows through the thicket of his hair and across his features. He made no move to approach Nicholas, only waited for him to reveal his intentions, but even his silent presence was an immediate balm to the agitation that frothed within Nicholas.

“You are bound and determined to make a nuisance of yourself, aren’t you?” Nicholas asked, unable to quite mask the desperation in his voice.

Thomas merely looked at him, a patient expression on his face that Nicholas found utterly infuriating.

“Don’t you have anywhere better to be?” he snarled, snatching desperately for the strength to speak the words that would end this farce once and for all, though they seemed to scatter ever further out of reach.

“No.”

Thomas moved then, closing the distance between them in a single step. His gloved hand rose, slow but steady as he reached out to Nicholas, as one might gentle a wild animal one wished to tame. Nicholas hated him for it, hated himself for his inability to resist the power of it. His throat constricted, dry and strangled as he forced himself to speak.

“What do you want of me?”

Thomas’s hand reached him at last, a caress of worn leather on his cheek, the tenderness of it at odds with the soldier’s palpable strength. It came to rest beneath his ear, thumb stroking gently along his jaw, and Nicholas was overcome by the radiating warmth, the hint of his scent, the unmasked emotion in the brilliant green eyes that trapped his and would not let him look away.

“Everything you wish to give.”

Nicholas stared up at him, hope and desperation and uncertainty tangled within him, and could not think of anything to say. It occurred to him that he had never seen Thomas in his uniform before. He never wore it on the practice field, nor when he made his clandestine visits to Nicholas’s chamber. The garish red tabard should have been a reminder of how very scandalous this affair would be, the shame that Nicholas invited upon himself and his name even contemplating such a thing, but Nicholas looked at him and saw nothing of the sort. Instead, the livery was a reassurance, a reminder that Thomas was no stranger to duty, to dedication. Evidence of his character, and proof of a heart that knew how to be steadfast, if Nicholas could but give him the chance. Thomas smiled, slow and easy, eyes warming and Nicholas was moving before he even knew he had made up his mind.

He lunged, and Thomas caught him. Nicholas seized his hair, fingers tangling in incongruously soft locks as he pulled himself up the towering length of Thomas’s body and crushed their mouths together, wet and ravenous. It was an instant relief, his swirling thoughts narrowed to that singular focus. There was no art or artifice to the devouring kiss, only two starving men finding sustenance in one another. 

Powerful arms clamped about Nicholas’s waist, trapping him tight against a rigid wall of mail as the hard edges of studded bracers dug into his back. Nicholas growled and pushed his way out of Thomas’s arms to set about removing the preposterous thing, but he could not even begin to fathom how to extract Thomas from its confines. He tore Thomas’s belt buckle open, letting it fall as he began to tug at the strap holding his pauldron in place.

“How does this work?” he snapped. “Get the blasted armor off!”

Thomas’s low chuckle rolled over and through him like slow thunder, leaving him trembling with want as Thomas stepped back. With just a few practiced flicks of his fingers the trappings fell away. Sword, gloves, bracers, pauldron and greaves scattered to the floor like dry scales, until only the tabard and mail remained. Thomas swept both off over his head in one decisive move, dropping them to the floor in a rush of chain.

He emerged as the man Nicholas knew, undiminished for the shedding of his carapace, exquisite in the stained linen shirt that bared the taut sinews of his shoulders and stark lines of his collar. He was as fine a sight as Nicholas had ever beheld, and Nicholas’s first instinct was to climb him. So that was what he did, clambering back up into Thomas’s arms until his legs were stretched deliciously wide and locked about the solid trunk of him, hands clutched tight in the soldier’s hair. Thomas grasped him firmly beneath his thighs, hands hard and possessive on Nicholas’s body.

Nicholas shivered and groaned. “No wonder you’re strong as a bear, hauling that ridiculous lot about day in and day out.”

Thomas smirked, leaning in to claim another kiss that Nicholas’s immediately granted. He sucked hard on Thomas’s tongue as Thomas took two steps forward to brace Nicholas’s back against the nearest shelf. He shifted his hold to clasp Nicholas’s head in one hand, cradling his skull with a broad palm and fingers that could doubtless crush Nicholas if they chose. A thrill went through Nicholas at the implicit violence of the hold, the danger so carefully leashed. His smile turned feral, he bit down hard on Thomas’s lip and felt those fingers tighten. The hand on his thigh jerked him in hard to rut their hips together in a bruising thrust. Stars burst behind Nicholas’s eyelids, and his world quaked.

It took him a moment to realize that it was not only he that shuddered.

“Wait, wait” he gasped, tearing his mouth from Thomas’s. “You’re going to bring down the shelves.”

Thomas paused, blinking to focus lust dark eyes upon the wavering tower of books above Nicholas’s head. He considered for a moment, before his knees abruptly folded and he carried them both down to the flagstones. Nicholas spluttered, affronted by the thought of rutting about on the floor like beasts, but he had no chance to protest before Thomas’s lips came down upon his again. His tongue laid insistent claim to Nicholas’s mouth and his hands palmed Nicholas’s rump, urging his hips into a sharp, needy rhythm. Nicholas’s indignation turned instantly to ash, and every other thought with it, consumed in the fire of want that Thomas stoked so ably within him.

Arousal burned hot and urgent in his loins, his clothed cock bumping against Thomas’s with each convulsive roll of his body, and Nicholas knew suddenly what he wanted. He forced his hips to stop moving and thrust his hands down between their bellies to pry at the laces of Thomas’s breeches, freeing him from the confinement of the cloth. Nicholas moaned as his hands found the hot, silken skin of Thomas’s cock. He swallowed Thomas’s answering groan as he drew him out into the cool air of the archives and wrapped both hands around him.

It was Thomas who broke the kiss, pressing his cheek to Nicholas’s temple to heave great, gusting breaths into his hair as Nicholas gave the gorgeous pillar of flesh an adoring caress. Nicholas was panting, too, his mouth beginning to water as he looked down to watch the way the delicate hood of Thomas’s cock slipped back beneath his touch, baring the crimson crown.

He smirked to himself, reveling in the heady delight of holding such a man in his hands and at his mercy, the guttural sounds of pleasure that Nicholas was able to pull from him with each teasing stroke. It was not enough, not until he could undo Thomas completely, as he had been undone. To that end, he pushed himself back and off of Thomas’s lap and gathered his knees beneath him. Thomas let him go and watched, eyes dark and spellbound, as Nicholas brushed his curls back over his ears and bent down over the soldier’s lap. Nicholas took a moment to survey the intimidating bulk of him, deciding upon a plan of attack. This was not an undertaking to be embarked upon lightly, but Nicholas was nothing if not resolute in the face of a challenge.

He closed his hand as fully has he could manage around the girth of the base, keeping a tight hold as he stroked up the whole length of it. His other hand pushed against Thomas’s chest, urging him to lie back and give Nicholas more room. Thomas acquiesced, settling on his elbows with cheeks flushed and breath blowing hard from his nostrils. Nicholas rewarded him with a smile and a slow, sucking kiss to the head of his cock. His tongue darted out to press against Thomas’s slit, lapping up the first bitter drops of seed that rose at the attention.

The sound that rumbled out of Thomas was breathtaking, a groan that echoed like the collapse of fortress walls, like the fall of empires. Nicholas breathed out a sigh as he laved Thomas slowly, bestowing lavish attention upon the whole rigid length and lapping up the steady stream of thin fluid that leaked from him before he opened his mouth wide and took Thomas inside. Just the head was near enough to convince him of his folly, but Nicholas curled his tongue hard to the underside of Thomas’s cock and pressed on, sliding down as far as he was able. He held for a moment, then pulled back before he advanced again, stretching his jaw farther with each slow pulse, forcing his throat to open, until his whole body was aching and his head was spinning with lack of air and an intoxicating sense of triumph.

The hands that seized him suddenly by the waist shocked him from his ecstatic trance. Nicholas only just stopped himself biting down in his surprise. He pulled off of Thomas’s cock and panted hard as the world began to spin around him in truth. Nicholas scrabbled for something to ground him as the soldier lifted him from the floor and flipped him around, but Thomas’s hands were steady and Nicholas did not fall. When Thomas was done, he was lying flat on the floor with Nicholas crouched above him, knees braced to either side of his head. Nicholas stared down between their bodies in growing incredulity as Thomas quickly shoved his robe up his back and made quick work of the laces on his hose, wrenching them down. The relief as his needy cock was freed was enough to make Nicholas’s hips give an involuntary twitch. Thomas’s scalding hands grasped the bared skin of his flanks, urging Nicholas’s knees wider and his cock down toward his open mouth.

Lust cracked through Nicholas with the force of a bolt, and he snapped his hips down with more force than was seemly. He immediately retreated, an apology in his throat, but Thomas would have nothing of decorum. His insistent grip drew Nicholas back, encouraging the jagged rhythm, until Nicholas was able to take up the cadence himself. His eyes closed, mouth falling open as he thrust into the wet cavern of Thomas’s mouth while Thomas sucked and hummed around him.

It was only the insistent bump of hot skin against his cheek that reminded Nicholas of his own abandoned task. He braced one trembling hand on the stone hard curve of Thomas’s thigh and seized his neglected flesh in the other, guiding it back to his mouth. He drove himself to his limit at once, swallowing Thomas down until his nose was mere inches from the crux of Thomas’s thighs. The soldier’s scent was overwhelming here, Nicholas’s senses fogged with his musk and the throbbing heat of him, but he was determined to win Thomas’s climax before Thomas could drive him to his. The pace of his head soon matched that of his hips as he worked Thomas in his mouth, the saliva that leaked from his lips slicking the movement of the hand that stroked what he could not take.

In the end, Nicholas triumphed. Thomas’s hands on his body spasmed tight enough to bruise, and his hips rose in a mighty thrust, choking Nicholas as he began to spill. Nicholas levered himself up, jerking Thomas in his hand and watching rapt as he poured out his seed in thick pulses. The sight was enough to finish him, his limbs snapping tight as he drove deep into Thomas’s mouth and he shouted a hoarse cry.

When he collapsed, he only just had the presence of mind not to do it on top of Thomas. He rolled to the side instead, to lie on his back on the floor and take stock of his quivering body. His wet cock was cold in the still air, his hips sore where Thomas’s fingers had gripped him. He worked his jaw slowly back and forth and cleared his throat a few times, trying to gauge how much of their function had been retained. He was near certain there was seed in his hair, no doubt that very moment attracting the dust from the flagstones.

It was not since those first furtive fumbles as a youth that he had felt at once so satisfied and so debauched. It was all Thomas’s doing.

“Have you no shame at all?” he rasped, appalled at the ruin of his voice.

Thomas heaved himself up to sit beside Nicholas’s prone form. His hair was spectacularly mussed, but he looking down at Nicholas with a seriousness that made Nicholas’s heart feel too large for his chest. “Did you not enjoy it?”

“I did,” Nicholas admitted, as though his body had not already proved it.

Thomas’s shoulders rolled in a shrug. “Then what shame can there be?”

Nicholas treated him to the most scornful look he could manage from his indecorous sprawl on the flagstones. “Were you raised in a brothel?”

“No,” Thomas said. “On a farm.”

“A farm. Really.” Nicholas pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, the laugh that burst from his chest tinged with disbelief. “How can you make me feel like this when I know nothing about you?”

The quirk of Thomas’s brow and the glance he cast between their exposed bodies spoke volumes.

“Alright,” Nicholas conceded, “I know something about you, but nothing at all about where you come from, where you’ve been.”

“What would you know of me?” Thomas asked.

Curiosity piqued, Nicholas pushed himself up on his hands. He considered for a moment, wondering where to begin. “Where were you trained?”

“Wainhope,” Thomas said. “On the border.”

“That explains the brogue.” Nicholas nodded. “When did you come to London?”

“Two years ago.”

“Why?”

“My family is here.”

There was no hesitation to his answers. His words were frank, if unembellished. Nicholas narrowed his eyes and decided to press his luck.

“Have you ever killed a man?”

“Yes.”

“More than one?”

“Yes.”

Thomas met his eyes evenly, his expression open and expectant, and in that moment it was terribly difficult for Nicholas not to give name to the emotion that swelled in his breast.

He reached up to run his finger over the scar on Thomas’s brow, tracing the shallow groove of it. “How did you get this scar?”

“There was attack on the outpost.”

Nicholas let his touch trace down Thomas’s cheek, scratching his fingers through rough stubble before they smoothed over the curve of his swollen mouth.

“From your not inconsiderable talents, one must assume you have had lovers before?”

“Yes.”

The admission should not hurt as much as it did. “Any of them important?”

“Yes.”

Nicholas’s stomach knotted, but he kept voice light. “Dare I ask if those affairs are behind you?”

Thomas’s brows drew down in a faint frown. He took Nicholas’s wandering hand in his and held it in a warm clasp. “Of course.”

The ache in Nicholas’s chest eased, just a little, and he dared to ask, “How did the last one end?”

“He was killed,” Thomas said. “In the attack that gave me the scar.”

Nicholas’s heart lurched. “A soldier?”

“No.” Thomas shook his head, his hand still entwined with Nicholas’s. “He looked after the animals. The horses, the dogs.”

“I supposed he must have been a gentle soul, then.”

“No.” A smile rose on Thomas’s face, small and tinged with the bittersweet sadness of a cherished memory. “He was raised in those lands, half wild himself.”

Jealousy rose up like bile, threatening to strangle Nicholas, but he swallowed it down. Thomas spoke of his past love, but he was looking straight at Nicholas as he did, sharing every truth that had been asked of him. Nicholas sniffed and tossed his head to hide his nerves.

“I would have a mind to be insulted, but I suppose I shall just commend you on your improvement in taste.”

Thomas laughed, low and warm, as he took Nicholas’s chin in his hand and turned him back to face him. He held Nicholas still for a slow kiss, lapping gently at his mouth until Nicholas shuddered with a soft moan.

Nicholas swallowed, and asked in a whisper against his lips, “Why did you keep coming? When I didn’t answer the door why didn’t you just give up?”

Thomas stayed where he was, his hand on Nicholas’s face, so close that Nicholas could feel the sweep of the soldier’s breath on his chin. His gaze was intent on Nicholas, those green eyes that seemed to see straight through all of his bluster.

“You didn’t ask me to.”

Nicholas realized with amazement that it was true. He had ignored, cursed, sent Oscar to do it for him. Not once had he asked Thomas to desist, and knowing him as he did, Thomas had not.

Nicholas’s breath escaped him in a shaky exhale, the inevitability of it falling over him, and there was peace in surrender. “There’s no point in fighting this, is there?”

Thomas smiled. “No.”

If this was damnation, then Nicholas would make it his own.

“Then I suppose you had better take me to bed.”

Thomas did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for consensual m/m sex.
> 
> Though if you're not into that I really have no idea why you're here.
> 
> I also have no idea why Nicholas’s chapters tend to turn into these character studies. All's well that ends in porn, I guess. This story is now officially caught up with the events of _In That New World Which Is the Old_ so we should soon be returning to our regularly scheduled programming.

**Author's Note:**

> So, Lady Flora, take my lay,  
> And if you find no moral there,  
> Go, look in any glass and say,  
> What moral is in being fair.  
> Oh, to what uses shall we put  
> The wildweed-flower that simply blows?  
> And is there any moral shut  
> Within the bosom of the rose? 
> 
> But any man that walks the mead,  
> In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,  
> According as his humours lead,  
> A meaning suited to his mind.  
> And liberal applications lie  
> In Art like Nature, dearest friend;  
> So ’twere to cramp its use, if I  
> Should hook it to some useful end.
> 
> The Day-Dream  
> by Lord Alfred Tennyson


End file.
